Read This Letter to All
25 Brothers, pray for us. 26 Greet all the brothers with a holy kiss. 27 I solemnly command you by the Lord that this letter be read to all the holy brothers. 28 The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you. Amen.
The close asks for prayer, a greeting, and one thing more forcefully than anything else in the letter.
Brothers, pray for us. Four chapters of reporting his own prayers for them end with a request for theirs — and it comes without qualification or explanation.
Greet all the brothers with a holy kiss. The customary greeting of that world, with one adjective added. What made it distinctive in a congregation was who it crossed: slave and free, Jew and Greek, exchanged as equals.
Then verse 27, and its force is unlike anything else here. I solemnly command you by the Lord that this letter be read to all the holy brothers. The verb is an oath-binding word, and it is the only place in the letter where Paul commands rather than begs — after three chapters of declining to use authority 1 Thessalonians 2:6, he spends it on this.
The reason is not stated, but the letter supplies it. Chapter 4 was written for people who had buried someone, chapter 5 for the faint-hearted and the weak. A letter of comfort reaching only the leadership would have failed at its errand.
And the last line is grace, as every letter of his ends.
settled What this mark means